Sounds pretty interesting - especially the matchmaking which hasn't been that great in HoN.

Valve Press release:

Quote

"Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today announced Dota 2, a massive sequel for one of the most played games in the world.

Coming to the PC & Mac in 2011, Dota 2 promises to take the unique blend of online RTS and RPG action that has made Dota popular with tens of millions of gamers and expand upon it in every way."

It's going to be interesting to see how it stacks up to hon, especially since they have both had significant input from Icefrog. I wonder if just the simple fact that it's called dota will mean it does better than hon.

What concerns me is how they choose to monetise it, charging for it makes it a better game, because people can't create new accounts without paying, so they are less likely to be leavers. But if they make it free and then monetise through micro transactions, it will get tons of users and probably over shadow hon, but will be full of leavers because accounts are free.